Facebook, despite being the largest and most dominant social network in the world, has recently been under scrutiny and heavy fire. The company, along with its chief and face, Mark Zuckerberg have been bashed with everything from floppy IPO results, invasive advertising, bot-driven data to privacy settings and layout visuals.

Kipp thinks they, like everyone else, deserve a break. Today is their day when they celebrate the connecting of one billion people around the globe and they have made quite an impressionable video to commemorate their achievement.

Facebook announced today that one billion people are using the platform at least once a month. Since its launch, 1.13 trillion likes and 140.3 billion friend connections were generated, with 219 billion photos shared since the launch of this application in the fall of 2005, which represent the total number of photos currently on the site, excluding deleted photos. Facebook also revealed that 17 billion check-ins were made, which included location-tagged posts.

New users joining in the same week as the one billion milestone are averagely 22 years old. The top five connected countries around the time of the milestone were (alphabetical order) Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico and the United States. Facebook currently has 600 million mobile users.

Below is Mark Zuckerberg’s excerpt:

Celebrating a billion people is very special to me. It’s a moment to honor the people we serve.
For the first time in our history, we’ve made a brand video to express what our place is on this earth.

We believe that the need to open up and connect is what makes us human. It’s what brings us together. It’s what brings meaning to our lives.

Facebook isn’t the first thing people have made to help us connect. We belong to a rich tradition of people making things that bring us together.

Today, we honor this tradition. We honor the humanity of the people we serve. We honor the everyday things people have always made to bring us together: Chairs, doorbells, airplanes, bridges, games. These are all things that connect us. And now Facebook is a part of this tradition of things that connect us too.I hope you enjoy this video as much as we do.

Thanks for helping connect a billion people.

And if you’re not into baseball metaphors, in a nutshell, Motorola is (re)launching the RAZR line. Okay, scratch that. The company decided to take elements from one of their most successful models And so the Motorola Razr is reborn.

Why the decision to bring back the RAZR? Here’s Motorola Mobility VP Spiros Nikolakopoulos:

The phone was launched in the US on October 18, then launched in the UK a day after. A press launch was held in the UAE today, October 25, with the phone only locally available in a couple of weeks. Its retail price is worth 2,599AED.

Who are they think won’t be able to wait to get their hands on it? Well…

One of the biggest features of the Razr is the Motocast, which is essentially a cloud platform that allows you to access content on your personal computer from your phone. Given that only 3 percent of the world’s population keep their content on a cloud system, the company focuses on the convergence aspect of the Motocast—which is also available on their some of their current models.

It also has built-in software that studies your consumption patterns and suggests ways to save up to 30 percent of your battery life.

What else can we expect?

Here are the rest of the specs:

The looks:
- At 7.1mm, it is reportedly the slimmest smartphone currently on the market.
- It has a glass face, diamond-cut aluminum accents and a hyper-vibrant 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Advanced display.
- It sports KEVLAR fiber (yes, KEVLAR, the material that’s used for bulletproof vests) and Corning Gorilla Glass to help the screen stand up to scratches and scrapes.

Under the hood:
- 1GB of RAM that hooks up with a dual-core 1.2GHz processor and Android™ 2.3.5 and HSDPA is 14.4.
- It comes preloaded with the Motorola MotoCast app, which provides the user a secure personal cloud, connecting the phone to their personal computers.
- Front-facing 720p HD video camera and 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with 1080p HD video capture to create your own movies—with image-stabilization technology

Is this making you think about making the switch then?

Here’s a product clip:

It comes with optional accessories as well. The Motorola Razr Work and Play Kit allows the phone to connect to your HDTV, speakers and other peripherals for large-screen entertainment. There’s also the Motorola Lapdock 500 Pro with a built-in keyboard and 14” HD resolution screen, Lapdock 100 and 500 Pro looks like a slim laptop, where you can watch movies, edit documents, video chat with the built-in webcam and browse the web with the full Firefox browser.

Slicker, bigger and faster than all HTC previous phones, the Sensational XL stands apart for one more reason: its affiliation with Beats by Dr.Dre.

So this is the deal: the HTC Sensation XL offers its indulgent buyer “a Beats audio experience” which is both a combination of the Dr.Dre software and hardware. Apparently, when one plugs in the Dre headphones, the nifty HTC switches to the Beats by Dr. Dre sound profile (software). OK, so I don’t quite get why you need special software to best use the headphones, but you can’t deny that this is an intriguing move from a marketing perspective.

HTC, which is currently aiming for 10 percent market share by the end of the year, is far from a popular choice here in the UAE, where the Blackberry and iPhones tend to be local favourites.

Teaming up with Beats by Dr.Dre, HTC shows a genuine interest in breaking into the young music scene-as illustrated by the launch party at a Nasimi beach next week.

The collaboration with Beats by Dr.Dre also marks a remarkable move to target the young music-loving brand-conscious lovers of Beats by Dre—a decidedly different strategy to gain an edge in the increasingly competitive smart phone market.

I look forward to see how many more such collaborations are likely to come in and just how far HTC will push their current foray into the music world.

The regional launch coincides with the international launch that rolled out within an American Ido episode. Much like this campaign, most of Fanta’s marketing strategy will remain heavily digital.

Source: KippReportdotcom on Youtube